Experimental and Opinions Acceptable

[DrNip]

Excellent! Glad I could help contribute to the madness! Make sure to build you an eye applying/drying rack and don’t forget to use gorilla glue clear.

[skeetbum]

The jigs you posted in post #27 look a lot like Ledhed’s auto jigs. Look those up and you’ll be learning from one of the best, and he’s taught all of us something along the way too.

[Micanopy]

Smaller was mentioned and there are a few that are much smaller. Bat Jigs with size #6 Whacky hooks and little spinner blades out the back. I also made the traditionalist style just to have some around. Maybe I should try to be a minimalist.

I found some metallic reflective yarn to form up minnow like bodies, and need some practice forming that profile. The picture doesn’t accurately depict that but the shine is nice.



I ordered some UV resin and can’t wait to get my paws on that stuff. Oooohhhhh


The eyes really do make the jig all that much nicer. They really do. I was applying super glue to theeye socket and easing the eye down onto it but what a mess. Glue on my fingers, on the eyes themselves. So I painted Sally Hansen over a few and that was ok.



But the final solution is going to be the resin. I can use a paring knife to extract the eye from the sheet, position it, then use my thumb to maneuver it exactly where it needs to be, compress it, and then slather it with resin and cure.

I also want to see what happens with resin over the metallic yarn, and various other fibers, and plan to make foam bodies as well. Saw a man making resin balls on the ends of chenille for flapper tails.

I will search for those jigs mentioned. Seems to be little room for anything new. Bummer as I love inventing new stuff. Thanks for all the advice.

[Micanopy]

Resin just got delivered. Here are eyes coated and cured. Perfectly clen, clear and defintely not coming off and it was easy to do, too.

[Micanopy]

So I painted up some jig heads and added eyes to them using just the sticky backside of the 3d eyes. Then I squirted a small amount of UV resin on some plastic and using a small paint brush swirled resin around the outer edges of the eyes, slightly over the eyes, and onto the painted jig. The smaller eyes I just painted right over. Then hung each off the fly tying vice with the UV light directly underneath, shining upwards. Because the resin was a thin coat it cured quickly and I was able to swap them out as I went. I did 30 jigs pretty quickly. I would say at a rate similar to painting eyes, only not having to wait for the paint to dry.

I prefer this to using glue as glue doesn’t allow me to make adjustments without getting it all over my fingers. The sticky back of the eyes works perfectly for the adjustment. Because the eyes protrude I feel they need to be pretty close to right.

The resin is low odor and marked hard and quick dry. Some resins produce fumes some folks find intolerable. The expensive fly tying resins in the little bottles have three rates of flow, thin, medium and heavy. I would estimate my stuff as heavy.

Not all UV lights will cure resin.

The resin feels somewhat tacky after curing but not objectionably so. They sell a finisher that goes over top to eliminate this but I don’t feel there is a real need.

It will thicken up and dry some while waiting on the plastic to be brushed, but I didn’t feel rushed to use it. The process was pretty much as imagined.

I saw a video of a man wrapping thread into patterns then securing the wraps with resin. I thought that was interesting and wondered what could be done upon a hook shank.

I gooped up the chenille on one jig and it looked shiny but was very hard like plastic. Didn’t feel inspired. However foams can be covered and turned into minnows. Ice jigs are tungsten and resin.

I believe that the resin could be used to hang things off the jig. I am thinking propeller or spinning blade off a Pinocchio nose type of deal. Might work might be a bad joke, but I’ll give it some thought and see.

I found that some of my yarn can be undone and combed out to produce fur for a tail. I did one jig like that and was happy to see the result. Still loving the rubber legs of course. Made jig heads using smaller hook sizes and smaller weights than whatI had been. Made some jigs using Size #1 hooks in 1/8 oz and 1/16 oz. Not sure there is an advantage to using smaller jigs, but everybody seems to think so. Crappie have big mouths and a 1/8 oz jig seems pretty small compared to what they cam take.

Going to fish tomorrow.

[Micanopy]

Nice day to be on the big lake. It is chock slap full of hydrilla with only the deepest sections are trollable. By deep I’m talking 3-9 feet deep. I only caught a couple but that was my fault. I saw a man catching pretty good. He looked mad as he reeled them in to pitch in his box.



Anyways he was long lining andI was pushing and using planer boards. Gonna change out to long lining next trip.

Got home and started the ribs and tied up some normal jigs.



My first bucktails, only that is yarn that I combed out. I dipped rubber legs into resin and made a blob on the end to flop about. Dobbed a sequin onto one blob. I added resin to the threads on a bucktail to make it shiny. Used yarn over the thread on one bucktail. Added legs to another.

I set the jig heads that had eyes added outside for the Sun to finish curing up and it did a great job. The eyes are not coming off. Glue might work to add eyes but it cannot match the resin as there are no edges to snag or catch and rip off. I wish the eyes were UV reflective but they appear as dull globs.

I want to troll crank baits now, too.

[Special K]

Very nicely done for sure.

[Micanopy]

I agree......needs features. Hmmmmm

[Micanopy]

[Micanopy]